The tale… (5)

[the fifth instalment of my fantasy in progress]

The three of them made their way along the muddy track, without much talk. Alex asked Celest if she liked the rain, to which she replied ‘I love it!’, and this seemed to explain to Alex why chatter was not necessary as he didn’t like to talk when it was raining either.

Just when Alex was wondering where exactly their village was, the donkeys, without direction at all, took a side path that meandered down a steep and winding path to the sea.

‘But there’s nothing this way but water and rocks!’ he said, which got a giggle from the old man and a smile from Celest. ‘Very well,’ Alex thought wryly, ‘a pair this queer couldn’t be thought of to live in any village I know.’

Soon the donkeys came to a halt by the water’s edge. Alex looked about but couldn’t see anything resembling a village, a home, or even a tent.

‘You can hop down now’, said Celest. Alex did. ‘Look out to sea, look hard. Do you see anything?’

Alex walked a little closer to the water. He began to have a very strange feeling. He looked hard and looked long. ‘What am I looking for?’

‘Never mind,’ bellowed a voice from behind him, like the voice of twenty men, ‘you can stop looking now.’

Alex turned, and very nearly fainted. His newfound friends were nowhere to be seen. Instead, up on the rocks, were two magnificent but strange and terrifying creates, the likes of which Alex had read about only in books. They were long, with bodies like a fat snake, or perhaps a thin fish, but with four powerful legs. On their back were folded wings. These were dragons!

Yet Alex knew which one was the old man, for merry eyes peered still from a whiskered head, with a sparkle of mischief ever-present. And Celest was a dark blue-green beauty, just like the colour of the deep sea as seen from the cliff top. She was as gentle and proud as a dragon just as she was on the back of the donkey.

‘Where are the donkeys?’ Alex wanted to say, but his mouth was glued shut, it seemed. He tried again, and he thought that they might have parted slightly.